by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
Life-sustaining, controversial, polluted—these are just three of the often contradictory words used to describe the St. Johns River. These many facets of the river are the source of the Cummer’s exhibition –New View: The Many Faces of the St. Johns River. The main piece in the exhibition is a joint effort between the Cummer and students at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts.
Despite the fact that the river is an ever-present part of our city, many of the students hadn’t really gotten to know it.
“Other than driving over the river, many of the students involved had never had direct contact with the river, so we decided to give them real life experiences,”says Hope McMath, Deputy Director of Programming at The Cummer.
The students went on a river tour and visited JAXPORT in preparation for their project. It’s a river that means many different things to many different people—a place to fish, a pretty view, a dumping ground or a vital part of city’s culture. Douglas Anderson students looked at art through the ages regarding rivers, from Egyptian depictions of the Nile to modern art. The Cummer has a collection of art depicting the St. Johns, the wildlife on its banks and historical prints that the students also studied.
Just taking in everything that a river means to the people living along its banks was an unwieldy task, but the 150 students did that, and more. They took all of those concepts and ideas to make one large collaborative work, a mixed media interpretation of the river.
As of June 24th they’ll have a modified installation of the exhibition that will include a documentary film about the project being created. Students in the Douglas Anderson film department produced this film. The exhibition will be traveling for a year after it leaves the Cummer.
One of the students told McMath that it was the most difficult project that he’d been involved with, simply because it was so difficult to get 150 people to agree, when all of them had such different ideas, both artistically and conceptually.
“Imagine a whole city trying to decide to do what do with the river…” said McMath. “That’s why the project was a kind of microcosm.”
To create the finished collaboration, the students voted on ideas and created small mock ups of ideas called maquettes. One of the rooms in the exhibition is devoted to some of the maquettes they created during the process. Finished student work also hangs throughout the gallery, between pieces that more famous artists rendered of the St. Johns and the wildlife surrounding it. You’ll see something from Audubon, multiple historical prints from Theodor de Bry and scenic watercolor from Fredrick Frieseke. All of these artists visited the banks of the St. Johns for inspiration.
If you visit, you’re sure to be inspired by this collection of works. At the very least, you might be thinking about the river in a whole new way.
The exhibition runs through July 13th. For more information, call (904) 355-0630.
Come for an evening of historic entertainment traversing along the St. Johns River. Special guest speaker, filmmaker, and author, Bill Belleville, will present his new documentary, In Marjorie’s Wake prior to its national release on PBS. By recreating the historic trip that Pulitzer-prize winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings once made on the river in 1933 and contrasting that to contemporary journeys of today, it will examine the many ways in which the St. Johns River has shaped culture—literature, art and music—over time. Includes exhibition tour, book signing.
Panelists from Riverkeepers, Douglas Anderson School for the Arts, JAXPORT, UNF, and The Cummer will discuss the unique and poignant issues surrounding the ecological, economical, historical and aesthetic elements driven by the St. Johns River.
Article Published in the April 2008 Issue of EU Jacksonville
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